This invention relates to surgical aids for use in displacing material such as non-skeletal soft tissue, muscles, organs and the like to permit access to a surgical site and to retain such material in displaced position while the surgical operation is proceeding.
The normal procedure today in hospital operating theatres is to have a surgeon's assistant displace material by hand from the surgical site, as called for by the surgeon, the assistant, of course, wearing surgical gloves and perhaps using sponges or towels or hand-held rigid metal instruments against the displaced material.
It is an object of the present invention to eliminate the need for use of the assistant's hands, thus freeing the assistant to assume a more productive role in the operation or completely dispensing with the need for the assistant, as the case may be. It is to be understood, however, that the surgical aids of the present invention are not limited to use in hospital operating theatres but may be adapted for use in dental surgery or veterinary surgery.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a surgical aid which will have minimal adverse effects on the material displaced thereby, as opposed, for example, to towels or sponges which, by virtue of their rough surface, can damage the serosal surface or organs with which they are in engagement. The towels and sponges can also cause drying of the serosal surface by absorption, thereby changing the normal physiology of the organ. Also, the towels and sponges often do not adequately protect the serosal surface from exposure to air, which also causes drying. The aids of the present invention do not suffer from any of these disadvantages nor from the disadvantages exhibited by other surgical aids which have been proposed hitherto but have not come into common use. Many of such previous devices cannot be repeatedly bent into various shapes, or they do not maintain the shape to which they are bent, or they react with the body fluids or the serosal covering, or they absorb the body fluids, causing drying, or they have a relatively rough or hard surface which can damage the organ, or they exert too much pressure on the displaced and retained organs, or they deteriorate too rapidly with use, or they are not adapted to be supported externally and therefore do not remain stationary.